This section of the journal comprises two core sets of reports linked to work in 2012: on finds and analyses relating to the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and on site-specific discoveries and ...reports in medieval Britain and Ireland (MB&I), with a selection of highlighted projects. For the PAS report, reviews on coin and non-coin finds and on specific research angles are presented. For MB&I, the Society is most grateful to all contributors (of field units, museums, universities, developers, specialist groups and individuals) who have provided reports on finds, excavations, field-surveys and building analyses for 2012. Note that while we can advise on content, we are not able to abstract from interim reports. Please also note that in certain cases the National Grid Reference has been omitted from reports to protect sites; do notify the compilers if this information is to be withheld. For MB&I, see below for the format and content of the Fieldwork Highlights section and for the contact details of the compilers. The annual Specialist Groups Reports now appear in the Society's Newsletter.
Most early ecclesiastical sites in Ireland were characterised by a separation between the main congregational church and the principal reliquary focus. It is argued that this reflects the fact that ...they were often initially founded as ecclesiastical settlements, and that cemeteries were usually a secondary development. Translation only occurred at a minority of sites, but even then the separation between liturgical space and reliquary space was usually maintained by placing corporeal relics in outdoor stone shrines or in metal reliquaries housed in diminutive shrine chapels built over the original gravesite. In this regard, Irish clerics of the eighth and ninth centuries seem to have imitated Early Christian memoriae, perhaps especially the aedicule in Jerusalem, rather than contemporary relic-cults in Francia or England. It is suggested that they had indigenous reasons for doing this including the particularly close link in Ireland between the development of the cult of relics and the concept of the Christian cemetery.
The results of a masonry analysis of the majority of Irish pre-Romanesque churches are presented. A number of local styles are identified in high-density areas, mostly in the west of the country and ...it is shown that the differences between these styles were not determined by geology. It is argued that these styles represent habitual variation and are therefore indicative of local groups of masons working over a relatively short period of time. This assessment is supported by an analysis of stone supply that suggests that quarrying was organised in an ad hoc manner to supply local needs. These churches are normally placed within a broad timeframe spanning the tenth to early-twelfth centuries but a number of factors combine to suggest that the habitual styles are a relatively late development, perhaps mainly from the mid-eleventh century onwards. Some of the implications of this proposed refinement of the existing chronology are briefly discussed.
